Beneath the broad tide of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depths the changes that take place upon the surface.
– A.E. Waite1

Have secret societies and occult brotherhoods been active behind the scenes of world events for thousands of years? Do these guardians of secret wisdom shape the growth of human consciousness and influence the destiny of nations? Are hidden masters of occult knowledge empowering and infiltrating certain political, cultural, spiritual and economic movements, in fulfilment of an ancient plan? Could it be that man’s great upheavals, wars, and revolutions, as well as his pioneering discoveries in science, literature, philosophy and the arts, are the result of a ‘hidden hand’? Can we decode history and find the mysterious interface between politics and occultism, thereby uncovering the real movers and shakers in our modern world?

The German philosopher Oswald Spengler warned of a “mighty contest” between groups of men of “immense intellect” who the “simple citizen neither observes nor comprehends.” Back in 1930 Ralph Shirley, the editor of the London Occult Review, Britain’s leading journal of esoteric sciences, endorsed “the suspicion that the ranks of occultism are secretly working for disintegration and revolution. Positive proof in the shape of a group of occultists working with this objective in view recently came under the notice of the present writer.”

Major-General Fuller, a former disciple of Aleister Crowley, who had links to British military intelligence, wrote about an insidious force using “Magic and Gold” striving “to gain world domination under an avenging Messiah as foretold by Talmud and Qabalah.” Fuller’s former chief Crowley worked as a secret agent for both Britain and Germany, although his British handlers noted his ‘unreliability’ warning he should only be used in espionage operations with the utmost care. During the First World War the German Foreign Office secretly requested the occultist Gustav Meyrink to write a novel blaming the Freemasons of France and Italy for the outbreak of war.

Madame Blavatsky believed the Catholic society of Jesuits had transferred their headquarters from the continent to England where they plotted to plunge man into passive ignorance and institute “Universal Despotism”. The founder of the Theosophical Society, a woman of immense intellect and first hand experience of secret societies, warned:
Students of Occultism should know that while the Jesuits have by their devices contrived to make the world in general, and Englishmen in particular think there is no such thing as Magic and laugh at Black Magic, these astute and wily schemers themselves hold magnetic circles and form magnetic chains by the concentration of theircollective WILL, and when they have any special object to effect or any particular and important person to influence.2

The French Revolution, one of Europe’s most important political upheavals, was largely the work of Masonic lodges dedicated to the overturning of the monarchy and an end of the established Catholic religion. In Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798), John Robison showed that the political clubs and correspondence committees during the revolution, including the famous Jacobin Club, sprang from these Masonic lodges.

The influence on history of mysticism, the occult and secret societies is generally dismissed by Western academics. Mainstream historians choose to ignore this aspect because they believe it has no real significance to world politics. In fact it is only through acknowledging the role and influence of the ‘occult underground’ that important world events can be fully understood and placed in their real historical perspective.